
OF 

GARRICK MALLERY, 

VICE-PRESIDENT, SECTION H, 
OF THE 

AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE. 



DELIVERED AT THE 

TOROUTO MZlETIK"G- 3 

AUGUST, 1889. 



SALEM PRESS PUBLISHING AND PRINTING CO., 
1889. 



With the compliments of 

Col. Gaeeick Malleey, 

Bureau of Ethnology, 

Washington, D. C. 



I 
) 



1SBAELITE AND INDIAN. 
A PABALLEL IN PLANES OF CULTUBE. 

ADDRESS 

OP 

GARRICK MALLERY, 

VICE-PRESIDENT, SECTION H, 
OF THE 

AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE. 



DELIVERED AT THE 

TOBOITTO MEETING, 
AUGUST, 1889. 



SALEM PRESS PUBLISHING AND PRINTING CO., 
1889. 



ton 3 



ADDRESS 



BY 

GARRICK MALLERY, 

VICE PRESIDENT, SECTION H. 



ISRAELITE AND INDIAN. 
A PARALLEL IN PLANES OF CULTURE. 



Axioms and postulates long limited man's study of man. This 
hampering has been most marked in reference to America, which it 
was agreed must have been peopled from the eastern hemisphere, 
and that the languages, religions and customs found here must have 
been inherited from nations registered in Eurasian records. What- 
ever was found here was through descent or derivation, the concep- 
tions of autogeny and of independent growth by which men in the 
sameplane of culture act and think alike not having arisen to ex- 
plain observed facts. 

Many authors have contended that the North American Indians 
were descendants of the 44 ten lost tribes of Israel." Prominent 
among them was James Adair, whose work, highly useful with re- 
gard to the customs of the southeastern Indians, among whom he 
spent many years, was mainly devoted to proof of the proposition. 
The Rev. Ethan Smith is also conspicuous, and even the last book 
discussing the Indians, published last year, bearing the comprehen- 
sive title " The American Indian," favors the same theory. 

The argument that the Indians are descended from the " lost 
tribes " is weakened by the fact, now generally accepted, that those 
tribes were not lost but most of the people were deported and ab- 
sorbed, their traces being left during centuries, and others fled to 
Jerusalem and Egypt. If any large number of them had remained 
in a body and had migrated at any time long before the Colum- 
bian discovery, but later than the capture of Samaria in the seventh 

(3) 



4 



SECTION H. 



century B. C, their journey from Mesopotamia to North America 
would have required the assistance of miracles that have not been 
suggested except perhaps in the book of Mormon. 

The authors of the school mentioned have for their excuse the 
fact, which I freely admit with greater emphasis, that an astound- 
ing number of customs of the North American Indians are the same 
as those recorded of the ancient Hebrews ; but the lesson to be de- 
rived from the parallel between the Indians and the Israelites is 
very different from that of the descent advocated. 

For brevity, the term Indians may be used — leaving the blunder 
of Columbus where it belongs — without repeating their designa- 
tion as North American, as I shall not treat of the aboriginal in- 
habitants south of the United States. This neglect of Mexico, 
Central and South America is not only to observe my own limits, 
but because some of the peoples of those regions had reached a 
stage in advance of the northern tribes. To avoid confusion, the 
term Israelites may designate all the nation. Although the tribes 
became divided into the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, when it is 
necessary to speak of the northern tribes they may be designated 
as the kingdom of Samaria. The shortest term, Jews, would be 
incorrect, as the people scattered through the world and called 
" Jews" are chiefly the descendants of the southern branch or frac- 
tional part of the children of Israel and have a special history be- 
yond that common to them with their congeners. 

The parallel presented is not selected because the two counterparts 
are more similar to each other than each of them is to other bodies of 
people among the races of the earth. I readily admit that a simi- 
lar parallel can be drawn between both the Indians and the Israel- 
ites and the Aryan peoples from which I and most of ray hearers 
are supposed to have descended. The selection is made for con- 
venience, because this audience is supposed to be familiar with the 
Old Testament, so that quotations and citations are unnecessary ; 
and also because many of them in this, the anthropologic section, 
are familiar with the Indians, so that the collocation of facts without 
a prolix statement is sufficient for comparison. 

Although the Indians are divided into fifty-eight linguistic 
stocks and three hundred languages, and there is great variety in 
their manners, customs and traditions, yet there is sufficient ge- 
neric resemblance between all of them to allow of typical instances, 
where the European civilization and missionary influence have not 



ADDRESS BY GARRICK MALLERT. 



5 



effected a change or where the early authorities are reliable. It is 
essential to examine the other side of the parallel — the Israelites 
— at a period coincident in development with that of the Indians. 
The history and records of the Israelites must be chiefly consid- 
ered regarding the times before they had formed a nationality and 
had become sedentary. Nearly contemporaneous with that nation- 
ality was the general use of writing, and it would appear that the 
era of King David would be a demarcating line. The Indians, 
never having arrived at the stage of nationality, though some of 
them (as the Iroquois and the Muskoki) were far on the road to it, 
and never having acquired a written language, their stage at the 
Columbian discovery, allowing for the differences among themselves, 
shows a degree of development similar to that of the Israelite pa- 
triarchal period and the early Canaanite occupation before the rule 
of kings. 

The argument, strongly urged, derived from an alleged similarity 
between the Hebrew and some Indian languages, especially in iden- 
tity of some vocables, is not to be considered. Perhaps the most 
absurd of all the coincidences insisted upon by Adair was the relig- 
ious use of sounds represented by him to be the same as the word 
Jehovah. As the deported Israelites did not pronounce the name 
given in the English version as " Jehovah," and the mode of its 
spelling and pronunciation is at this moment in dispute — generally 
given as Jahveh — it would be very remarkable if the tribes of In- 
dians supposed to be descendants of the lost ten tribes of Israel, 
should at this time know how to pronounce a name which their al- 
leged ancestors did not possess or at least did not use. 

Father Lafiteau was so much excited by coincidence in sound of 
some of the Iroquoian names and expressions with the language of 
the ancient inhabitants of Thrace and Lycia, that he based there- 
on a theory of descent. On similar grounds ancestors of the In- 
dians have been found among the Phoenicians, Scandinavians, 
Welsh, Irish, Carthagenians, Egyptians, Tartars, Hindus, Malays, 
Chinese, Japanese and all the islands of Polynesia. It is not 
wonderful that, with the choice of three hundred Indian languages 
besides their dialects from which to make selections of sounds, 
some one should be likened to any other language, for any lan- 
guages that are spoken can, in that manner, — i. e., by a compari- 
son of vocables— show identity of sound and a percentage of coin- 
cidences of significance. Philology now makes different rules of 
comparison. 



6 



SECTION H. 



It is important to establish the time when writing was first 
known among the Israelites, because then the traditions would first 
become fixed. No reliable history can exist before writing. "What 
people remember are fables and myths ; from those must be win- 
nowed the histoiy of the time when the people could not write. 
There is no reason to suppose that the Hebrew language was 
written at the time of the exodus though some mnemonic system 
might have been used. If Moses had all the knowledge of the 
Egyptians he could not have used any better mode of writing than 
their hieratic, in which it was not possible to write intelligibly any 
long document in the Hebrew language, simply because the ad- 
vance made by the hieratic, in which the use of phonetics began, 
was not sufficient to be adapted to the Hebrew vocables. 

There has been an attempt to show that the old Hebrew alpha- 
bet, which has been classed as partly Phoenician and partly Baby- 
lonian, was obtained from Assyria at a time before the exodus, but 
the theory is not yet established. Even if Assyrian characters 
adaptable to the Hebrew language did then exist it is not probable 
that the Israelite herdsmen did so adapt them with current use. 

The compilers of the Old Testament, as we now have it, felt 
no doubt that the law could, have been written on Mount Sinai. 
The}' knew how to write and so did their fathers, and it did not oc- 
cur to them that there had ever been a time in which persons of the 
higher classes were ignorant of writing. 

It is probable that in the days of Samuel the Israelites had made 
some progress in the art of writing. An alphabet had been known 
to some of them before, but a common use is of greater conse- 
quence and that depends much upon the substances used for writ- 
ing, their cost and the convenience of procuring them. The people 
did write under David at, perhaps, about 1100 B. C. 

Moses flourished about fifteen centuries before Christ, and the 
oldest legends relating to him are, in their present shape, four or 
five centuries later than his death. He did not practically organ- 
ize any formal state of society, or if he did, temporarily, by his 
personal power, it had no direct consequence or historical continu- 
ity. The old system of clans and religion continued as before. If 
the legislative portion of the Pentateuch was the work of Moses it 
remained a dead letter for centuries and not until the reign of Jo- 
siah became operative in the national history. 

The historical account undoubtedly states that Moses was, by in- 
spiration, the founder of the Torah ;but the question is, what was that 



ADDRESS BY GARRICK MALLERY. 



7 



Torah? It was not the finished legislative code. The promulgation 
of the law at Sinai was long after described dramatically to pro- 
duce a solemn impression, representing as occurring on a momen- 
tous occasion what in fact slowly and imperceptibly grew during 
ages. 

The code now ascribed to Moses was certainly a revised code, 
and in an unusual sense a mosaic work. When the Israelites at- 
tained the use of writing they did as all other people in the world 
did when they began to use writing ; i. e., they wrote out their own 
myths, traditions and legends as they knew them at the time of 
writing, unless special reasons made it desirable to manipulate 
them. There were such special reasons in the later history of Is- 
rael, in the contests between the Elohists and the Jahvists. When 
the compilers belonging to the two schools produced the two ver- 
sions, intermixed and confused in the books we now have, they dif- 
fered from all people in history where there was a struggle for po- 
litical power, if, to suit their own views, they did not color the 
earlier documents, long since lost, namely : the "Book of the Wars 
of Jahveh" and the " Jasar." 

It is also certain that during the long time in which the tradi- 
tions were transmitted orally, the growth of the nation's ideas pro- 
duced a change in them without any fabrication or design. 

Students who have devoted their lives to study the last compila- 
tion have been able to identify, by linguistic and historical exege- 
sis, the fragments of the original traditions, the epic tales of the 
first documents, the theocratic deductions and the later sacerdotal 
visions, though the two versions appear on the same page and 
sometimes in the same paragraph. The results of this immense 
labor by the Hebraists of this generation have lately been pre- 
sented by Renan in a popular form. 

In addition to the linguistic and historical tests, the internal ev- 
idences, especially the antedating of conceptions several centuries 
(some instances of which will be mentioned) show that the books, 
as now received, were written long after the periods referred to in 
them. 

The main document on the primitive age is the Book of Genesis, 
regarded for the reasons mentioned, not as literally historical, but 
as the tradition, written at a respectable antiquity, of an age that 
really existed. In examining it the historical part is discovered, 
not by belief in the miraculous, but by the proper comprehension 
of the mythical. 



8 



SECTION H. 



Much can be learned, from myths and legends, of the periods 
anterior to strict history. The Homeric epics are not history, yet 
they throw a flood of light upon Greek life a millennium before the 
Christian era. The ante-Islam tales and the Arthurian and Niebel- 
ungen romances of the Middle Ages are not true in fact, yet they 
are storehouses, preserving the social life of the days when they were 
composed and in a useful degree of the time embraced by the tra- 
ditions. The generalizations derived from the details of ancient 
texts are truths obtained by induction. 

It is expedient to make a disclaimer before entering upon the nec- 
essary comparisons of religions. I absolutely repudiate any at- 
tack upon any religion. Let us learn a lesson from the Indians, 
not only in tolerance but in politeness. One of the early Jesuit 
missionaries in Canada recounts how he pleased a Huron chief by 
his discourse upon the cosmology set forth in the Scriptures, and 
felt that he had secured a convert until the chief, thanking him for 
his information, added : " Now you have told me how your world 
was made, I will tell you how my world was made" ; and pro- 
ceeded to give the now familiar story of the woman falling from 
the sky and the turtle. He was perfectly satisfied that the priest 
should retain his belief with which his own, in his opinion, did not 
conflict. Doctor Franklin tells of a Susquenannock who, after a 
similar lecture from a Swedish missionary, was answered in the 
same manner ; but this missionary became angry and interrupted 
the Indian, whereupon the latter solemnly rebuked him with pity : 
"I have listened politely to what you told me ; if you had been 
properly brought up you would have believed me as I believed 
you." 

Religion, as accurately defined, embraces only the perficient rela- 
tions between divinity and man, and the mode in which such relations 
operate. Popularly it includes cosmology and theology. For present 
convenience the broad subject may be divided into Religious Opin- 
ions and Religious Practices. 

In treating it, all religious views personally entertained must be 
laid aside and the study conducted strictly within the scope of an- 
thropology. A rule of science is not to use a miraculous factor 
when it is unnecessary. JSfec deus intersit, nisi dignus vindice nodus. 
It will be recognized as puerile to explain puzzling phenomena, as 
was done for ages, 

When solved complete was any portent odd 
By one more story or another god. 



ADDRESS BY GARRICK MALLERT. 



9 



If experience of observed facts and of the orderly working of the 
forces of nature is not sufficient for any proposed study, some 
minds resort to the miraculous while others humbly confess igno- 
rance. 

In anthropology, the object is to study within the category of hu- 
manity. It is undoubtedly true that in their explanation of phenom- 
ena, all the peoples of the world have resorted to revelations. Every 
myth or teaching is directly or indirectly through revelation ; but 
as the revelation is on both sides of the equation, it can be elimi- 
nated from any parallel. Religious writers have often explained the 
differences in beliefs among the various peoples of the world on the 
hypothesis that religious knowledge was implanted at one time in 
the ancestors of all those peoples, and that the divergence now found 
is through decay of that supernatural information. 

A distinguished cardinal was rash when, admitting that the doc- 
trine of the devil and his command of demons was not known to 
the Israelites until after the Babylonian captivity, he insisted that 
it might be divine revelation, notwithstanding its immediate source. 
He said that if God made Balaam's ass speak, it would also be easy 
for him to provide that the heathen should give correct instruction. 
Doubtless. But this practically means that all revelations suiting 
us are true and all others false. When the judgment upon the truth 
or falsehood of an alleged revelation is made only in accordance 
with the prejudices of the judge, the subject becomes too eclectic 
and elastic to be considered by science. It is not allowable to im- 
press a new hypothesis to support an older one when the requisition 
is for facts to convert the first hypothesis into an admitted theory. 

Certain it is that the assertion of revelation cannot be dealt with 
in this address. To raise that point acts as a cloture, cutting off all 
debate. 

RELIGIOUS OPINIONS. 

The most generally entertained parallel between the Indians and 
the Israelites, repeated by hundreds of writers, was that they both 
believed in one over-ruling god. This consensus, if true, would at 
once establish a beatific bridge of union between the two peoples, 
but its iris arch vanishes as it is viewed closely. 

After careful examination, with the assistance of explorers and 
linguists, I reassert my statement published twelve years ago, that 
no tribe or body of Indians, before missionary influence, entertained 
2 



10 



SECTION H. 



any formulated or distinct belief in a single, over-ruling "Great 
Spirit," or any being corresponding to the later Israelite or the 
Christian conception of God. All the statements of the mission- 
aries and early travellers to the opposite effect are erroneous. Even 
some of the earliest writers discovered this truth. Lafiteau says 
that the names 44 0ki" and " Manito" were given to various spirits 
and genii. Champlain said that Oki was a name given to a man 
more valiant and skilful than common. " Hawaneu," reduced to 
correct vocables, only means loud-voiced, i. e., thunder. " Kitchi 
Manito" is not a proper name for one god, but an appellation of an 
entire class of great spirits. So with the Dakota term " Wakan," 
which means only the mysterious unknown. A watch is a wakan. 
The Chahta word presented as 44 God " for two centuries is now 
found to mean a 44 high hill." 

The Indians probably had a vague idea of some good spirit or 
being whom they did not worship and to whom they did not pray. 
They prayed and sacrificed to the active daimons, concerning whom 
they had many myths. It is true that in their various cosmologic 
myths there was some vague and unformulated being who started 
the machinery by which the myth proceeded ; but when once started 
no further attention was paid to such originator. Perhaps some mod- 
ern advanced thinkers have no clearer definition of a great first 
cause. 

Praise has been lavished upon the Indians because they did not 
take the name of God in vain. That, however, might be because 
they did not have any word corresponding with the English 44 God " 
either to use or misuse, which is the fact according to the best lin- 
guistic scholars, and they deserve no more praise for avoidance of 
profanity than for their total abstinence from alcoholic drinks before 
such had been invented or imported. The terms 44 Master of Life," 
44 Maker of Breath" and 44 Great Father" were epithets merely. 
Perhaps there was an approach to a title of veneration when the 
method of their clan system was applied to supernatural persons, 
among whom there would naturally be a chief or great father of the 
44 beast gods," on the same principle as there was a chieftaincy in 
tribes. 

The missionaries who have persistently found what did not exist 
are not without excuse. Wholly independent of any design to force 
welcome answers, an interviewer who asks a leading question of 
an Indian can always obtain the answer which is supposed to be 



ADDRESS BY GARRICK MALLERY. 



11 



desired. The sole safe mode of reaching the Indian's mental at- 
titude is to let him tell his myths and make his remarks in his own 
way and in his own language. When such texts are written out, 
translated and studied they are of great value. It is only within 
about twelve years that this has been done, to the correction of 
many popular errors. 

It is also true that in attempting to translate the epithets men- 
tioned, the missionaries used the word which, in their own concep- 
tion, was the nearest in significance. An instructive instance was 
where Boscana described a structure in southern California as a 
" temple." It was a circular fence, six feet high, not roofed in — a 
mere plaza for dancing ; but the dancing was religious and the word 
" temple " was the best one he could find, by which mistake he has 
perplexed archaeologists who sought for the ruins. 

A consideration not often weighed is that the only members of 
the Indian tribes who are willing to give their own ideas on relig- 
ious matters to foreigners, are precisely those who are most intelli- 
gent and most dissatisfied with their old stories. There were minds 
among them groping after something newer and better, and it would 
be easy to translate their vague longings into the conception of an 
overruling Providence. But the people made no such advance. 

The missionaries who announced that the Indians were strict in 
the belief in one god, were much troubled by the statement of the 
converted native, Hiaccomes, of Martha's Vineyard, who, having 
enumerated his thirty-seven gods, gave them all up. This, however, 
was a typical instance of the truth. The Indians had an indefinite 
number of so-called gods corresponding with the like indefinite 
number of the Elohim of the Israelites before the supremacy of 
Jahveh. 

The Biblical religion of Israel has been popularly held to be co- 
eval with the world, but it had its own beginning by no means 
archaic, after which at least four hundred years were required for 
its development. About a thousand years before Christ it did not 
exist. The religious practices of David and Solomon did not ma- 
terially differ from those of their neighbors in Palestine. Not un- 
til the time of Hezekiah, about 725 years before Christ, did the 
Israelite religion attain to a distinct formulation. Its ordinances 
and beliefs advanced from crudity and vagueness to ripeness and 
establishment. It was a system long in growth and so could not 
early possess authoritative documents. 



12 



SECTION H. 



The nomad Semite believed, with other barbarians, that he lived 
amid a supernatural environment. The world was surrounded and 
governed by the Elohim — myriads of active beings, seldom with dis- 
tinct proper names, so that it was easy to regard them as a whole 
and confound them together. Yet the power bore different names 
in different tribes. In some cases it was called El, or Alon, or 
Eloah ; in other cases Elion, Saddai, Baal, Adonai, Ram, Milik or 
Moloch. 

The Elohim, though generally bound together, sometimes acted 
separately ; thus each tribe gained in time its protecting god, whose 
function was to watch over it and direct it to success. 

In the transition to nationality, the Israelites adopted a national 
god, Jahveh, who was not just, being partial towards Israel and 
cruel towards all other peoples. The worship of a national god is 
not monotheistic but henotheistic, recognizing other gods of other 
peoples. The work of the later prophets consisted in restoring the 
attributes of the ancient elohism under the form of Jahveh, and in 
generalizing the religious cult of a special god. 

Jahveh was not at first the god of the universe, but subsequently 
became so because he was the God of Israel, and very long after- 
wards was claimed to be the only god, mainly because the Israelites 
claimed to be the peculiar people. Even down to the time of the 
prophet Isaiah, there were intermittent conflict and co-ordination 
between Baal together with the other gods of Canaan and Jahveh. 

The revolution accomplished by the prophets did not change ex- 
pressions. The word Jahveh was too deeply rooted to be removed, 
and the people spoke of Jahveh as they had formerly spoken of the 
Elohim. He thus became the supreme being who made and governed 
the world. In time even the name of Jahveh was suppressed and 
its utterance forbidden ; and it was replaced by a purely theistic 
word meaning the Lord. Undoubtedly the prophets, at the time of 
the Kings and later, taught the worship of one God, but the people 
were not converted to the doctrine until after the great Captivity. 

When established in Palestine, the Israelites entered into com- 
munion with their Canaanite kindred and worshipped Baal. With 
less apparent reason they frequently bowed down to the Dagon of 
the Philistines and the Ashtaroth of the Phoenicians. Solomon in- 
troduced the service of the Sidonian Astarte, which was intermitted, 
but later, Ahab established the worship of the Sidonian divinities 
in the Kingdom of Samaria. It was subsequently re-adopted in the 



ADDRESS BY GARRICK MALLERY. 



13 



kingdom of Judah, and not until the reign of Josiah were their al- 
tars finally demolished. 

The true parallel, therefore, between the Indians and the Israel- 
ites, as to belief in a single overruling god is not that both, but 
that neither, held it. 

In the stage of barbarism all the phenomena of nature are attrib- 
uted to the animals by which man is surrounded, or rather to the 
ancestral types of these animals, which are worshipped. This is the 
stage of zootheism. Throughout the world, when advance was made 
from this plane, it was to a stage in which the powers and phenom- 
ena of nature are personified and deified. In this stage the gods are 
anthropomorphic, having the mental, moral and social attributes of 
men, and afterwards having the forms of men. This is the stage of 
physitheism. The most advanced of the Indian tribes showed evi- 
dence of transition from zootheism to physitheism. The Israelites, 
in the latter part of the period selected, showed the same transition 
in a somewhat higher degree than the Indians did when their inde- 
pendent progress was arrested. 

It is needless to enlarge upon the animal gods of the Indians, 
or to furnish evidence that they gave some vague worship to the 
sun, the lightning, to fire and winds. 

There is no doubt that the Israelites were for a long period in 
the stage of zoolotry. They persisted in the worship of animal gods : 
the golden calf, the brazen serpent, the fish-god and the fly-god. 
The Second Commandment is explicitly directed against the wor- 
ship of the daimons of air, earth and water, which is known to 
have been common ; and the existence of the prohibition shows the 
necessity for it, especially when formulated, after the practice had 
existed for centuries, by a religious party which sought to reform it. 

The God of Sinai was a god of storm and lightning, which phe- 
nomena were strange to the Israelites after their sojourn in plains. 
The ancient local god of the Canaanites began in the exodus to 
affect the religious concepts of the Israelites so that they identified 
Jahveh with the god whose lands they were planting and whose 
influence they felt. Sinai was thenceforward the locality of their 
theology. Jahveh, through all changes, remained there as his 
home ; he spoke with the voice of thunder and never appeared 
without storm and earthquake. 



14 



SECTION H. 



Another class of gods connected with beast worship and also 
with the totemic institution (to be hereafter specially noted) was 
tutelar, the special cult of tribes, clans and individuals. It was 
conspicuous both among the Israelites and the Indians. 

Jahveh, according to all that is known, may first have been a 
clan or tribal god, either of the clan to which Moses belonged or of 
the clan of Joseph, in the possession of which was the ark. No es- 
sential distinction was felt to exist between Jahveh and El, any 
more than between Ashur and El. Jahveh was only a special name 
of El which had become current within a powerful circle, and which, 
therefore, was better fitted to become the designation of a national 
god. When other tutelar gods did not succeed, there was resort to 
Jahveh, probably in the early instances, because he was the most 
celebrated of all the tutelar gods, and the reason for that celebrity 
was that the most powerful of the clans claimed him as tutelar. 

Hecastotheism is a title given to the earliest form of religion 
known, which belongs specially to the plane of savagery. In it 
every object, animate or inanimate, which is remarkable in itself 
or becomes so by association, is a quasi god. The transition be- 
tween savagery and barbarism, as well as between the religions of 
hecastotheism and zootheism connected with them, was not sharply 
marked, so that all their features could exist at the same time at a 
later era, though in differing degrees of importance. 

This intermixture is found both among the Israelites and Indians. 
An illustration among many is in the worship of localities and of 
local gods. Conspicuous rocks, specially large trees, peculiar 
mountains, cascades, whirlpools and similar objects received wor- 
ship from the Indians ; also the places where remarkable occurrences, 
as violent storms, had been noted ; and among some tribes the par- 
ticular ground on which the fasting of individuals had taken place, 
with its accompanying dreams. The Indians frequently marked 
these places, often by a pile of stones ; but the Dakotas, when 
they did not have the stones, used buffalo skulls. 

In the Old Testament frequent allusions are made to a place 
where dreams or remarkable events occurred becoming holy. They 
were designated by pillars. The Israelite compilers adopted the 
pillar of Bethel for the same reason that required Mohammed to 
adopt the Caaba. They could not, while struggling for monothe- 
ism, always directly antagonize the old hecastotheism. 

Future state. — The topic of a future state may be divided into 



ADDRESS BY GARRICK MALLERY. 



15 



(1) the simple existence of the soul after death, (2) the resur- 
rection of the body, and (3) the rewards and punishments in the 
next world. 

The classical writers often distinguished two souls in the same 
person — one that wandered on the borders of the Styx until the 
proper honors had been given to the corpse ; and the other was a 
shadow, image or simulacrum of the first, which remained in its 
tomb or prowled around it. The latter could be easily invoked 
by enchanters. 

Some of the Indians thought that the souls of the dead passed 
to the country of their ancestors, from which they did not dare to 
return because there was too much suffering on the road forward and 
backward. Nevertheless, they believed that there was something 
spiritual which still existed with their human remains and they tell 
stories of it. Thus there are two souls, and the Dakotas have four, 
one of which wanders about the earth and requires food, the sec- 
ond watches over the body, the third hovers around the village, 
and a fourth goes to the land of spirits. 

The Iroquois and Hurons believed in a country for the souls of 
the dead, which they called the "country of ancestors". This is 
to the west, from which direction their traditions told that they 
had migrated. The soul must go there after death by a very long 
and painful journey, past many rivers, and at the end of a narrow 
bridge fight with a dog like Cerberus, and some of them fall into 
the water and are carried away over precipices. In a manner diffi- 
cult to understand, this road is all on the earth ; but several of the 
Indian tribes consider the mi Iky- way to be the path of souls, those 
of human beings forming the main body of the stars, and the dogs, 
which also have souls, running on the sides. In their next world 
the Indians do precisely the same as they customarily do here. 

The Israelites believed in a doubling of the person by a shadow, 
a pale figure, which after death descended under the earth and 
there led a sad and gloomy existence. The abode of these poor 
beings was called Sheol. There was no recompense, no punish- 
ment. The greatest comfort was to be among ancestors and rest- 
ing with them. There were some very virtuous men whom God 
carried up that they might be with him. Apart from these elect, 
dead men went to oblivion. Man's good fortune was to have been 
accorded a number of years, children to perpetuate his family and 
his memory to be kept in respect after his death. 



16 



SECTION H. 



The Indians did not believe in death as a positive state. The 
spirit does not wholly leave the body and the body is not resur- 
rected. Perhaps a good instance of their belief is that of a tribe 
of Oregon Indians who, hearing the missionaries preach on the 
resurrection, immediately repaired to an old battle-field and built 
great heaps of stones on the graves of their fallen foes to prevent 
their coming up again. They did not want any of that. 

Among the Israelites the resurrection of the body was a foreign 
idea imbibed during the captivities in Assyria and Babylonia. 
Perhaps the first reference made to it is in the prophet Daniel. It 
was not fully believed in so late as the procuratorship of Pontius 
Pilate. 

Among the Indians privation of burial and funeral ceremonies 
was a disgraceful stigma and cruel punishment. There was trouble 
about children who died shortly after their birth, and also about 
those whose corpses were lost, as in the snow or in the waters. In 
ordinary cases of death the neglect of full and elaborate ceremo- 
nies caused misfortune to the tribe. 

The story of the "happy hunting ground" among the Indians 
has not been generally apprehended. As regards what we now con- 
sider to be moral conduct there was no criterion. A good Indian 
was one who was useful to his clan and family, and was, at the time 
of his death, not in a condition of violating the clan rules, for 
which the Polynesian word tabu has been adopted. The moral 
idea of goodness of a Pawnee chief is to be a successful warrior or 
hunter. The actual condition at the time of death decided the 
condition in the future life far more than any conduct during life. 
In the portions of the continent where the scalp was taken, the 
scalped man remains scalped in the world of spirits, though some 
tribes believed that scalping prevented his reaching that world. 
If he had but one leg or eye here, he had but one leg or eye after- 
wards. In tribes where they cut off the ears of slain foes the 
spirit remains without ears. A special instance is where the victim 
was considered too brave to be scalped, but the conquerors cut off 
one hand and one foot from the corpse to keep him from inflicting 
injury upon the tribe of the conquerors in the next world. If an 
Indian died in the night some of the tribes thought that he re- 
mained in total darkness ever afterwards. 

One of the most curious of their beliefs was in connection with 
drowning and hanging, the theory being that the spirit (which was 



ADDRESS BY GARRICK MALLERT. 



17 



in the breath) did not escape from the body. This doctrine was 
made of special application to prevent suicide which was gener- 
ally performed either by hanging or drowning, the deduction be- 
ing that suicides could not go to the home of the ancestors. 

It is probable that the various trials by which the spirit is sup- 
posed to reach the other world, which were very numerous in the dif- 
ferent tribes, were invented to secure confidence in the absence 
thereafter of the ghosts of the dead, because the same difficulty would 
attend their return. As without the assistance of the mortuary 
rites, given at the time of death and sometimes for considerable 
periods afterwards, the ghosts would not be able to reach their fi- 
nal home, there being no repetitions of those rites to assist their 
return, their absence was secured. Fear of the ghosts, not only 
of enemies but of the dearest friend, generally prevailed. After a 
death all kinds of devices were employed to scare away the spirit. 
Sometimes a new exit was cut through the wigwam, through which 
the corpse was taken, and afterwards filled up, it being supposed 
that the spirit could reenter only by the passage through which it 
went out. Sometimes the whole wigwam was burned down. There 
was always a long period which travellers called that of mourning 
during which drums and rattles were used to drive away the spirits. 
After firearms were obtained they were discharged in and around 
the late home of the deceased with the same object. The loud 
cries of so-called lamentation had probably a similar origin, and 
this is more marked when the lamenters were strangers to the dead, 
and even professionals, not unlike the Irish keeners. 

In this general connection it is proper to allude to the common 
abstinence from mentioning the true name of any dead person. 
This is more distinct than the sociologic custom where the man's 
true" name should not be used in his life except on special occa- 
sions. There was some fear that, by calling his name, he might 
come back. 

It would be wrong to accuse the Indians of want of feeling in- 
dicated by their horror of the dead. In one of the most ancient ac- 
counts — that of Cabeza de Vaca — it is declared that the parents 
and other relatives of the sick show much feeling while life remains 
but give none to the dead, — do not speak of them or weep among 
themselves or make any signs of grief or approach the body. This 
domestic reticence is entirely different from but not antagonistic 
to the obligatory mortuary rites which w r ere practised. 
3 



18 



SECTION H. 



To secure the living from the presence of the spirits of the dead 
was the first object, and the second was to assist those spirits in 
the journey to their destination. These were the prevailing ideas 
of all the mortuary customs of the Indians. It may be true that there 
was in some cases, though missionary influence is to be suspected, 
a belief that there were two different countries (sometimes called 
towns) in which the bad and the good would severally remain, but 
that was not of general acceptance. There was but one future coun- 
try, and the only question was whether the spirits got there or 
not. There was no hell. 

The Israelites, in their sacred books, do not show the influence 
of fears or hopes concerning a future state with reference to in- 
dividual morality. Among them death was not an inevitable ne- 
cessity, but an infliction as a punishment and their signs of mourning 
were acts of penitence and contrition, with the idea that the survivors 
might have been the cause of the death. All deaths were classed 
with public calamities, such as pestilence, famine, drought or in- 
vasion, being the work of an enemy — perhaps a punishing god, 
perhaps a daimon or a witch. They regarded it so great an evil to 
die unlamented that it was one of the four great judgments against 
which they prayed, and it was called the burial of an ass. It is 
however questionable whether rites attending upon death were not 
with them similar in intent to those of the Indians ; i. e., to pro- 
vide, by means of those rites, for the future welfare of the departed, 
rather than in accordance with our modern sentiment, to show re- 
spect. Passages of the Old Testament may be noted, e. g., the one 
telling how the bodies of Saul and his children were rescued from 
Bethshan and taken to Jabesh where they were burned and the 
bones buried. The ceremony in this case and others seems to have 
been the burning of the flesh and the burial of the bones, as was 
frequently done by the Indians on occasions of haste, without wait- 
ing as usual for the decay of the flesh, the later gathering of the 
bones being at stated periods of years. 

There is no evidence that the Israelites feared the corpse and 
its surroundings beyond that to be inferred from the ordinances 
concerning pollution. 

RELIGIOUS PRACTICES. 

There should always be a cross reference in thought between 
what in time became a religious practice and the earlier sociology, 



ADDRESS BY GARRICK MALLERT. 



19 



which will be mentioned in its place, with which it was closely con- 
nected. 

Josephus remarks about the Israelites that "beginning immedi- 
ately from the earliest infancy nothing was left of the very smallest 
consequence to be done at the pleasure and disposal of the person 
himself." 

The same remark would be true regarding the Indians. Their 
religious life was as intense and all-pervading as that of the Israel- 
ites. It is yet noticed in full effect among tribes as widely sep- 
arated, both by space and language, as the ZuSi and the Ojibwa, 
and their practices are astonishingly similar in essence and even 
in many details to some of those still prevailing among us. 

Among the Hurons and Iroquois, there were religious rites for all 
occasions, among others for the birth of a child, for the first cutting 
of the hair of a child, for its naming and for its puberty, for the 
admission of a young man into the order of warriors and the promo- 
tion from warrior to chieftaincy ; for the making of a mystery-man, 
for the putting of a new canoe into the water, for the breaking of 
ground for new fields, for the sowing and harvest, to fix the time 
for fishing, to decide upon a warlike expedition, for marriages, for 
the torturing of captives, for the cure of disease, for consulting 
magicians, invoking the daimons and lamenting the dead. 

Shamans. — Among the Indians there was frequently an estab- 
lished and recognized priesthood, obtained by initiation into se- 
cret religious societies, corresponding in general authority with the 
Levites, although the latter were instituted in a different manner, 
perhaps imitated from the exclusive class of the priesthood in 
Egypt. The shamans in all tribes derived a large part of their 
support from fixed contributions or fees. 

Adair describes a special ceremony for the admission or conse- 
cration of a priest among the southern tribes, as follows : "At 
the time of making the holy fire for the yearly atonement of sin, 
the Sagan clothes himself with a white ephod, which is a waist- 
coat without sleeves, and sits down on a white buckskin, on a 
white seat, and puts on it some white beads, and wears a new pair 
of white buckskin moccasins, made by himself, and never wears 
these moccasins at any other time." 

Similar exclusive use by the High Priest of the garments used 
on the day of the atonement is mentioned in Leviticus. 

In addition to the organized class mentioned, there were other 



20 



SECTION H. 



professional dealers in the supernatural who may be called conju- 
rers, sorcerers or prophets, but were independent of and often an- 
tagonistic to the regular shamans. The}' arrived at recognition 
individually by personal skill in an exhibition of supernatural power, 
that is, they wrought miracles to prove themselves genuine. 

At the time of the exodus there were, among all the Semitic 
tribes, sorcerers who possessed mysterious secrets and enjoyed some 
of the power of the elohim. They were paid to curse those whose 
ruin was desired. Balaam was the most distinguished sorcerer of 
that time. 

One of the most frequent purposes for employing supernatural 
agency was to bring on rain in time of drought. The practitioner 
generally tried to delay his incantations as long as possible in hopes 
of a meteorologic change. Sometimes, on failure, he was killed, as 
he was supposed to be an enemy who possessed the power he pro- 
fessed but was unwilling to use it ; and to prevent this dangerous 
ordeal in a dry season, he charged in advance certain crimes and 
"pollutions" of the people on account of which all his skill would be 
in vain. The more skilful rain-makers among the Sioux and the 
Mandans managed not to be among the beginners, but towards the 
last of the various contestants. The rain would surely come some 
time, and when it came the incantations ceased. The shaman who 
held the floor at the right time produced the rain. 

Frequent reference to rain-making is found in the Old Testament, 
in which the prophets were the actors. 

The mystery-men were consulted on all occasions as sources of 
truth, not only to explain dreams, but secrets of all kinds, to pre- 
dict future successes in war or to tell the causes of sickness ; to bring 
luck in the hunt or in fishing ; to obtain stolen articles, and con- 
versely, to produce ill luck and disease. Their processes, together 
with thaumaturgic exhibitions, included some empiric knowledge, 
and also tricks of sleight-of-hand and magnetic passes. 

The Chahta had a peculiar mode of finding the cure for disease, 
by singing successively a number of songs, each one of which had 
reference to a peculiar herb or mode of treatment. The prefer- 
ence of the patient for any song indicated the remedy. 

The Israelites believed that diseases as well as accidents with- 
out apparent cause, and other disasters, were the immediate acts 
of the Elohim or were caused by evil spirits ; therefore they relied 
upon prophets, magicians or enchanters for exorcism. Hezekiah's 



ADDRESS BY GARRICK MALLERY. 



21 



boil was cured by Isaiah. Benhadad, king of Syria, andNaaman, 
the Syrian, applied to the prophet Elisha. All the people resorted 
to their favorite mystery-men. 

Even so late as the time of Josephus it was believed that Solomon 
had invented incantations by which diseases were cured, and some 
handed down by tradition were commonly used. Incense banished 
the Devil, which also could be done by the liver of a fish. Certain 
herbs and roots had the same power. Their medical practices 
might be recited, with slight change of language, as those of the 
Indians. The farther back any examination is made into savagery 
and barbarism the more prevalent faith-cure appears. 

Witches. — The Indians were in constant dread of witches, wiz- 
ards and evil spirits ; but the activity of the good spirits was not 
so manifest. They however told Adair how they were warned by 
what he calls angels, of an ambuscade, by which warning they 
escaped. Bad spirits, or devils, were the tutelar gods of enemies, 
to be resisted by a friendly tutelar. The idea of a personal Satan 
was not found before the arrival of the missionaries. 

Among the Indians witches were often indicated by the dreams 
of victims, and were often killed merely upon accusation, and it is 
interesting to notice, with relation to comparatively modern history, 
that the accused frequently confessed that they were sorcerers and 
declared that they could and did transform themselves into animals, 
become invisible and disseminate disease. 

A sufficient reference to the Israelites in this connection is to 
quote the ordinance : u Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." This 
injunction, in the higher civilization, is observed by destroying the 
idea that witches ever have lived or ever can live. 

Dreams and divination. — The topics of inspiration by dreams 
and divination by oracles may be grouped together. 

The Indians supposed that with, and sometimes without, a spe- 
cial fasting, and other devices to produce ecstasy, the spirits or 
daimons manifested themselves in dreams, and it was sometimes 
possible in these dreams for the soul to leave the body, even to 
visit the abode of departed spirits. 

Among the Iroquoian tribes the suggestions made by dreams were 
implicitly followed, not only by the dreamer, but by those to whom 
he communicated his dreams. For instance, an Iroquois dreamed 
that his life depended upon his obtaining the wife of a friend, 
and though the friend and his wife were living happily, and parted 



22 



SECTION H. 



with great regret, the dreamer had his wish. The same tribe 
had a special feast which was called the "feast of dreams," and 
partook of the nature of Saturnalia. Every object demanded by 
the dreamers must be given to them, and in some instances they 
were unable to remember their dreams, and the special interposi- 
tion of the mystery-men was invoked to state what their dreams 
were in fact and what was their significance. 

Among the invaluable reports of the Jesuit missionaries, one in 
1639 gives the general statement that the Indians consulted dreams 
for all their decisions, generally fasting in advance ; that, in fact, 
the dream is the master of their lives ; it is the god of the country 
and dictates their decisions, hunts, fishing, remedies, dances, games 
and songs. 

The belief in revelations through dreams was universal, and the 
gift of explaining them was also a revelation. Their legends on 
this subjeet recall those about Joseph and Daniel. In addition 
may be quoted : 

"In a dream, in the vision of the night, when deep sleep falleth 
upon men, in slumberings upon the bed. 

"Then Heopeneth the ears of men and sealeth their instruction. " 

And in Deuteronomy a prophet is equivalent to a dreamer of 
dreams. 

There were a variety of oracles among the Indians. Those most 
interesting to me are connected with pictography. Among many 
tribes, especially the Mandan, Hidatsa, Minnitari and Abnaki, 
after certain fasts and exercises various hieroglyphics deciding the 
questions which had been propounded appeared on rocks. They 
were deciphered by the shaman who had made them. 

The apparatus by which Jahveh was consulted was the urim and 
thummin, a form of oracle described as connected with the ark. It 
ceased to be known in the fifth century before Christ and is now 
but vaguely understood. From the description and tradition it 
could, physically, have been worked by a custodian. 

Severe fasts were probably the most common of the Indian re- 
ligious practices, continued until they saw visions, sometimes for 
their own personal benefit, as deciding upon their names to be 
adopted from the advent of a guardian spirit, and sometimes for 
tribal advantage, the doctrine of all of them, as Father Lafiteau 
quaintly observes, being the same that prevailed among many peo- 
ple of his day, to lead the mind from gross and carnal obstructions 



ADDRESS BY GARRICK MALLERY. 



23 



of the body. The real effect was to produce mental disorder. This 
ecstasy obtained by fasting was often accelerated by profuse sweat- 
ing and the use of purgative or emetic drinks. Violent and pro- 
longed exercise by dancing in a circle until the actors dropped in 
a swoon sometimes concluded the ceremonies. 

The Israelite prophets were excited to inspiration by external 
means, such as dances and orgiastic proceedings resembling those of 
the dervishes and also of the Indian mystery-men. Music was a 
general accompaniment of the ecstasy. When they were about to 
prophesy, they became in a condition of frenzy, as if they were be- 
side themselves. When Elisha sent one of the children of the 
prophets to anoint Jehu it was said of him : "Wherefore cometh 
this mad fellow ?" 

The Israelites, when they adored the golden calf sat down to eat 
and drink and then arose to dance and sing and the Indians used 
dance and song, or rather chant, in the same religious manner. 
The Hebrew festival (Hag) is closely connected with dancing in 
a circle. 

Pollution and purification. — The subject of pollution and purifi- 
cation has been much and properly insisted upon as affording a 
striking parallel between the Israelites and the Indians. The In- 
dians made special huts for the women, at certain periods, who were 
considered so unclean that nothing which they touched could be 
used. A Muskoki woman, after delivery of a child, was separated 
from her husband for three moons (eighty-four days). This may 
be compared with the Levitical law by which the mother of a female 
child was to be separated eighty days ; of a male forty days ; and 
Doctor Boudinot sa}^s that in some Indian tribes there was similar 
distinction between male and female children. 

Among the southern Indians wounded persons having running 
sores were confined at a distance, as in the Levitical law, and kept 
strictly separate. An Israelite, dying in any house or tent made 
all who were in it, and all the furniture in it, polluted, and this pol- 
lution continued for seven days. All who touched a corpse or a 
grave were impure for the same time. Similarly, many of the In- 
dians burned down the house where there had been a death, and all 
persons in it were polluted. 

Many writers have asserted, as one of the excellencies of the Is- 
raelite customs, that the purification imposed upon those who had 
been engaged in a burial was a sanitary regulation, a measure ren- 



24 



SECTION H. 



dered expedient in a hot country. As no great proportion of the 
Israelites generally inhabited a country hot to the degree indi- 
cated, or had any conception of disease or the cause of death, this 
explanation is hardly sufficient. Much later the compilers might 
have gained some sanitary knowledge by which the old supersti- 
tion was utilized. Its true explanation is from supernatural, not 
from natural concepts. It is probably connected with a point 
mentioned before ; i. e., the avoidance of corpses from the fear of 
the spirit of the dead and of the bad spirit which had caused the 
death, and the purificatory ceremony was for the demon, not for 
the disease. The neglect of sanitation is well illustrated among 
the Navajo, who are little affected b} T civilization. Upon the death 
of one of their members they block up the shelter containing the 
corpse and from fear of the spook or of the agent of death, or of 
both, not from fear of the corpse itself, never again visit it. Other 
tribes pile stones on the corpse which prevent its disturbance by 
beasts, but do not absorb the effluvium. Still others exposed the 
dead on scaffolds. To leave corpses to putrefy freely is certainly 
not a sanitary measure, yet it was a practice existing together with 
the mortuary rites before mentioned, though many of the tribes 
used earth burial and a few used cremation. 

On a broad examination of the topic of " pollution," so styled 
by most writers, it seems to be best explained by our recent un- 
derstanding of tabu. 

Sacrifice. — Man once imagined superior forces who yet could be 
invoked and moved to and from an} 7 purpose. The divine world 
was produced in his own image and he treated its gods as he liked 
to be treated by his inferiors. He believed that the way to placate 
the forces surrounding him was to win them over as men are won 
over, by making presents to them. This clearly continued among 
the Israelites until the eighth century B. C, but it is to be regarded 
as a stage succeeding a former condition of zoolotry and totemism 
without notice of which its details cannot be understood. 

Most peoples sacrificed to their divinities animals taken from 
their flocks, plants, fruits and herbs. People who had no domestic 
animals offered those taken in the hunt. The Indians offered the 
maize from their fields and the animals of the chase, and threw into 
the fire or water tobacco, or other herbs which they used in the 
place of tobacco. Sometimes these objects were hung up in the air 
above their huts. The northern Algonquins tied living dogs to 



ADDRESS BY GARRICK MALLERT. 



25 



high rods and let them expire. In a similar manner other Indians 
stuck up a deer, especially a white deer, on poles. The plains 
tribes gave the same elevation to the head or skin of an albino buffalo 
on mounds, not having poles convenient. The spotless red heifer 
of the Israelites may be compared with the spotless white of the 
animals of the chase. 

The southern Indians always threw a small piece of the fattest of 
the meat into the fire when eating or before they began to eat. They 
commonly pulled their newly-killed venison several times through 
the smoke of the fire, perhaps as a sacrifice and perhaps to consume 
the life spirit of the animal. They also burned a large piece and 
sometimes the whole carcass of the first buck they killed either in 
the winter or the summer hunt. The Muskoki burn a piece of ev- 
ery deer they kill. 

The Israelites offered daily sacrifice in which a lamb (except the 
skin and entrails) was burned to ashes. In some of their sacri- 
fices there was not only distinction between animals that were fit 
and unfit, but in the manner of treatment. Sometimes the victim 
was not to be touched, but should be entirely consumed by fire. 
In others the blood should be sprinkled around the altar and the 
fat and the entrails burned, the remainder of the body to be eaten 
by the priests. But it was a crime to eat flesh that had been of- 
fered in sacrifice to a false god. 

The offering of the first fruits and therefore of the first born, to 
the divinity, was one of the oldest ideas of the Semites. Moloch 
and Jahveh were conceived as being the fire, devouring that which 
was offered to it, so to give food to the fire was to give to the god. 
In time, a substitute was suggested ; the first born was replaced by 
an animal or a sum of money. This was called the " money of the 
lives." 

Adair says that at the festival of the first fruits the southern Indi- 
ans drank plentifully of the " cusseena" and other bitter liquids, 
to cleanse their bodies, after which they bathed in deep water, then 
went sanctified to the feast. Their annual expiation of sin was 
sometimes at the beginning of the first new moon in which their 
corn became full-eared, and sometimes at the accidental season of 
harvest. They cleansed their " temple" and every house in the 
village of every supposed polluting thing, carrying out the ashes 
from the hearths. They never ate nor handled any part of a new 
harvest till some part of it had been offered up ; then they had a 
4 



26 



SECTION H. 



long fast " till the rising of the second sun," taking their emetic 
drink. On the third day of the fast the holy fire was brought out 
and it was produced, not from any old fire, but by the rubbing of 
sticks. From this it was distributed to the people. 

Lafiteau says that the first animal the young hunter kills he burns 
with fire as a sacrifice. Another festival was a kind of holocaust, 
where nothing of the victim was left, but must all be consumed, 
even to the bones, which were burned. There were also feasts of 
first fruits. 

The Dakotas allowed no particle of the food at one of their re- 
ligious feasts to be left uneaten. All bones were collected and 
thrown in the water that no dog might get them or women trample 
over them. It was common among many of the tribes that no 
bones of the beast eaten should be broken. There is no doubt 
that this is connected with zoolotry and was intended to prevent 
anger on the part of the ancestral or typical animal, the result of 
which would be the disappearance of the game. There were many 
other ceremonies of the same kind. "When the Mandans had fin- 
ished eating at any time they presented a bowlful of the food to a 
buffalo head, saving, " Eat this," evidently believing that by us- 
ing the head well the living buffalo would still come and supply 
them with meat. 

It is probable that what the authors have called the " day of 
atonement" or " expiation" was really a general wiping-out of of- 
fences or settlements of accounts between individuals and particu- 
larly between clans, after which there should be no reprisal. This 
is illustrated by a peculiar ceremony among the Iroquois, strongly 
resembling the scapegoat of the Israelites. A white dog. before 
being burned at the annual feast, was loaded with the confessions 
or repentings of the people, represented by strings of wampum. 
The statute of limitations then began to operate. 

In the Jahvistic version, the Passover, an old festival held in the 
spring, was historically connected with the departure from Egypt. 
The ceremonies are too well known to require narration, but will 
readily be compared with those of the Indians. 

Incense, — The use of the incense among Indians was the same as 
among Israelites, i. e.. to bring, and to please the spirit addressed. 
A genuine instance among the Iroquois was where tobacco was of- 
fered so late as 1882 and in archaic formal language still pre- 
served, translated as follows : 



ADDRESS BY GARRICK MALLERY. 



27 



Address to the fire. " Bless thy grandchildren, protect and 
strengthen them. By this tobacco we give thee a sweet-smelling 
sacrifice and ask thy care to keep us from sickness and famine." 

Address to the thunder. " 0 grandfather ! thou large voiced, 
enrich and bless thy grandchildren ; cause it to rain so that the 
earth may produce food for us. We give this tobacco as thou hast 
kept us from all manner of monsters." 

The Dakotas not only burned tobacco in their buffalo medicine 
to bring the herds, but used scented grass. Other tribes burned 
the leaves of the white cedar. These forms of incense were also 
used to entice the inimical spirits, the shaman being supposed to 
be able, when they had arrived in the form of a bear or some other 
animal, to kill them with his rattle. Some of the Indians believed 
that incense and sacrifices generally were only used for the spirits 
from whom they feared harm. They said it was not necessary to 
trouble themselves about the good spirits who were all right any- 
how. 

Fetiches. — Among many of the tribes of Indians there is a tri- 
bal totem (and often several clan totems) which, in later times be- 
coming chiefly symbolic and emblematic, was once used in objective 
form for the most important religious purposes. Particularly, it was 
carried on extensive warlike expeditions. Adair, who calls it an 
"ark," describes it as made with pieces of wood, fastened together 
in the form of a square, to be carried on the back. It was never 
placed on the ground nor did the bearers sit on the earth when they 
carried it. In many other tribes it was a bag of skins and its conr 
tents varied, but generally were " blessed" or "sacred" fragments 
of wood, stone or bone. Among the Omaha it was a large shell, 
covered with various envelopes and was never wholly exposed to 
sight, which would occasion death or blindness. 

A custodian was appointed every four years by the old men of 
the Blackfeet, to take charge of the sacred pipe, pipestem, mat and 
other implements which he alone could handle. 

The ark of the Israelites was probably derived from the Egyp- 
tians who had a real ark, which was carried on the shoulders of the 
priests in processions. When the exodus began the Egyptian ark, 
for convenience, was changed into a chest fitted with staves for 
bearers. It became the standard of their warring and wandering 
life. 

In addition to what has been called the ark or tribal fetich, the 



28 



SECTION H. 



practice that each Indian had his own mystery-bag is to be com- 
pared with the Israelite teraph which was a family or tutelary fetich 
independent of the national worship and frequently was the subject 
of later denunciation. It was probably made of carved wood, of- 
ten carried on the person, but was generally held as a household 
god or domestic oracle. The teraphim markedly resembled the Ro- 
man penates. 

This comparison is explanatory of the statement that neither 
the Israelites nor the Indians made idols. Its truth depends up- 
on what is considered to be an idol. If the definition is limited 
to the human form, the assertion is true, because their religion 
was not anthropomorphic ; but fetiches were certainly the objects 
of worship, the recrudescent forms of which, appearing even in 
civilization, have been amulets, lucky stones, pieces of wood and 
charms. 

Sabbath. — It is not possible, in discussing the Israelites, to ne- 
glect the institution of the Sabbath. The four quarters of the moon 
made an obvious division of the month, and wherever the new moon 
and full moon are made religious occasions there comes a cycle of 
fourteen or fifteen days, of which the week of seven or eight days 
forms half. It is significant that in the older parts of the Hebrew 
Scriptures the new moon and the Sabbath are almost invariably 
mentioned together. Among the Israelites and perhaps among the 
Canaanites, from whose speech they borrowed, joy on the new moon 
became the type of religious festivity in general. There is an in- 
dication that in old times the feast of the new moon lasted two 
days, so that an approximation to regular recurrence of the sub- 
divisions constituting the week was gained. The Babylonians and 
Assyrians had an institution dividing the month into four parts* 
by which, on the days assigned, labor was forbidden ; but origi- 
nally the Israelites' abstinence from labor was only incidental to 
their not working at the same time that they were feasting. While 
nomads, with only intermittent work, they had no occasion for a 
fixed day of rest. 

The new moons were at least as important as the Sabbath until 
the seventh century before Christ. When the local sacrifices were 
abolished and the rites and feasts were limited to the central altar 
which practically could only be visited at rare intervals, the gen- 
eral festival of the new moon ceased. The Sabbath did not, but 
with the abolition of local sacrifices it became an institution of law 



ADDRESS BY GARRICK MALLERT. 



29 



divorced from ritual. The connection between the week of seven 
days and the work of creation is now recognized as secondary. 
The original sketch of the decalogue probably did not contain any 
allusion to the creation, and it is even doubtful whether the origi- 
nal form of Genesis distributed creation over six days. 

Subsequent history of the Sabbath shows a reflex action between 
religion and sociology. Religion prevailed against better arrange- 
ments for periods of rest. Sociology used religion to get what it 
could. 

The Indians reached the first part only of the inception of the 
Sabbath in the ceremonies of the new moon, which were to them 
of great importance. 

Circumcision. — This, generally regarded as a distinctive mark of 
the Israelites, is by no means peculiar to them, did not originate 
with them, and is found in so many parts of the world with such ev- 
idences of great antiquity as to contravene its attribution to them. 
Its origin is a subject of great dispute. As practised indiscrimi- 
nately in infancy, it may perhaps, be a surgical blunder. It is 
certain that it was not at first among the Israelites a religious rite. 
The operation was not performed by the priesthood, but by a sec- 
ular person of skill, without ceremony. It afterwards was regarded 
as an initiatory ceremony, and as such its parallels may be found 
all over the world, but as a special national distinction the declared 
object was not accomplished. Besides the Egyptians, Arabs and 
Persians, the coincidence with whom might be expected, many tribes 
of Africa, Central and South America, Madagascar and scores of 
islands of the sea show the same mark, and it has even been found 
in several of the North American tribes. The sole motive for al- 
luding to this very comprehensive subject is to correct the popular 
belief that the custom is peculiar to the Israelites. 

Parallel myths. — The Indian myths and legends supporting and 
explaining the religious opinions and practices before mentioned 
have a startling resemblance to those of the Israelites. It is not 
necessary to mention the deluge legends, which are common all 
over the world, at least in countries where inundations have oc- 
curred, and no more than general interest attaches to the mythical 
teacher, an inspired man or benevolent god in shape of man, who 
taught all that is known about hunting, fishing, the properties of 
plants, picture-writing and indeed every art, and founded institu- 



30 



SECTION H. 



tions and established religions, after which he generally disap- 
peared, his actual death being seldom established. The legends of 
Michabo, Ioskeha, Hiawatha, Wasi and Manabosho will occur to 
all students as showing their analogue in Moses. A point of pe- 
culiar moment, however, is that the myths referred to are so strik- 
ingly identical in their minute details with those of the Israelites, 
even after all care has been taken to eliminate European influence 
and to assure their aboriginal antiquity. 

An Ojibwa tradition tells the adventures of eight, ten and some- 
times twelve brothers, the youngest of whom is the wisest and the 
most beloved of their father and especially favored by the high 
powers. He delivers his brothers from many difficulties, brought 
about by their folly and disobedience. Particularly, he supplies 
them with corn. A variant statue of Lot's wife, in stone instead 
of in salt, is still shown near the Mississippi River. The Chahta 
have an elaborate story of their migrations in which they were 
guided by a pole leaning in the direction to which they should go and 
remaining vertical where they should camp. A still closer resem- 
blance to the guidance of the Israelites in the desert is in the mi- 
grations of the Tusayan where indication was made by the move- 
ment and the halting of a star. The Pai Utes were supported in 
a great march through the desert by water continually filling the 
magic cup until all were satisfied ; and a similarly miraculous sup- 
ply of food to starving exodists is reported. 

Among the Ojibwa traditions there is a variant of the concep- 
tion that man could not look upon the form of a divine being and 
live. In this case the divine beings were obliged to wear veils, and 
when one of them unintentionally let his eyes fall upon the form 
of a man the latter instantly fell dead as if struck by lightning. 

The Medawe rite was granted the Ojibwa at the time of a great 
trouble through the intercession of Manabosho, their universal un- 
cle, and rules of life were given them at the same time, which are 
represented in hieroglyphs on birch bark. They have a resem- 
blance in motive to the Biblical legends and laws. At the time of 
a great pestilence, which was when the earth was new, the Ojib. 
wa were saved by one of their number to whom a spirit, in the 
shape of a serpent, revealed a root which to this day they name 
the " snake-root," and the songs and rites of that medicine are in- 
corporated in the Medawe. 

Mr. Warren mentions that sometimes he translated to the old 



ADDRESS BY GARRICK MALLERT. 



31 



Ojibwa men parts of Bible history, and their expression invariably 
was : " The book must be true, for our ancestors have told us sim- 
ilar stories generation after generation since the earth was new." 

Last year a well informed representative of the Muskoki, in 
Washington, answered questions about the myths and legends of 
his people by the simple remark : u They are all in the Old Testa- 
ment. Read them there without the trouble of taking them down 
from our people." 

SOCIOLOGY. 

The golden age of the Israelites, as recorded in compliance with 
tradition, was that ending with the Judges, when the people, with- 
out a monarchy, lived in a state nearest the ideal under a supposed 
theocracy, which also was a later idea. The exploits of Gideon, 
Jephtha and Samson are grand pictures of antiquity equal and simi- 
lar to those in the Homeric poems. If the Indians could have written 
about their own past they would have portrayed a similar golden 
age, which, in fact, is mirrored in their traditions and myths. But 
from the absence of flocks and herds they were never in a true pas- 
toral or nomadic state, and therefore never in the absolute patri- 
archal stage. 

The Dakota, Comanche and some other tribes became adventi- 
tiously nomads only after the introduction of the horse by Europe- 
ans, afterwards supplemented by firearms. The large majority of 
the Indians never saw a horse until centuries after the Columbian 
discovery. So the pastoral stage, which among the Israelites ac- 
celerated their transition from savagery to barbarism, was not ex- 
perienced by the Indians ; and supposing that the two bodies of 
people were at one time equally advanced in culture, it might well 
have required three thousand years longer for the Indians to reach 
the stage in which they were discovered than for the Israelites to 
have arrived at the culture shown in the days of the Judges. At 
the time taken for proper comparison, both peoples were living un- 
der the clan or totemic system. 

A clan is a body of kindred in which kinship is established by 
laws now long disused, and so strange to our present ideas as to be 
comprehended with difficulty. Some of the more salient features 
of the system appear in the division of the people into tribes inter- 
permeated by the clans, with special rules of government, adop- 
tion, protection, punishment, property and marriage. 



32 



SECTION H. 



The totemic stage was first intelligently noticed, and j^et has its 
typical representation, among the aborigines of America and Aus- 
tralia. Among the latter it is called kobong. An animal or a plant, 
or sometimes a heavenly body is connected with all persons of a 
certain stock, who believe that they are the descendants of it as 
their totem, their protecting daimon, whose name they bear. The 
line of descent is normally from the mother. When a clan becomes 
dominant its totem daimon may come to command the worship of 
all the clans or tribes in the group, the other gods becoming sub- 
ordinate. 

The clan system lately found in actual force in two large geo- 
graphic divisions of the world has preserved a clue to the mould- 
ered maze of man's early institutions. What is known of the 
clans, tribes and league of the Iroquois explains what, until re- 
cently, was mystical about the tribes of Israel. 

Each clan or tribe had a badge or totem from which it was named, 
generally an animal, as eagle, panther, buffalo, bear, deer, raccoon, 
tortoise, a snake or a fish, but sometimes one of the winds and 
other noticeable phenomena. 

The Israelites had their standards. It is not probable that the 
blessings of Jacob and of Moses, referring to them, were merely 
metaphoric. In the former, Judah is named as a lion, Issachar as 
an ass, Dan as a serpent, Naphtali as a hind, Benjamin as a wolf, 
Joseph as a bough. In Moses' blessing four of such names occur — 
Ephraim as a bullock, Manasseh as a bison, Gad as a lion, and Dan 
as a lion's whelp. The inference is strong that these were the lead- 
ing totems in the several tribes, and the slight disagreements in the 
lists may be accounted for by the fact that the head clan in Dan 
had changed in the interval. 

David seems to have belonged to the serpent stock. The most 
prominent among his ancestors bore a serpent's name. Some cir- 
cumstances in his life show his connection with a serpent totem. 

Critics have doubted whether Moses was so opposed to idolatry 
as asserted later, for a brazen serpent, perhaps an ancient idol of 
Jahveh, said to have been set up by him, was in existence until the 
reign of Hezekiah who broke it into pieces. It is true that it might 
have been an idol of Jahveh, perhaps worshipped as a teraph, but it 
might have been simply a totem. The erection of the brazen ser- 
pent b} T Moses in the wilderness may be more consistently ex- 
plained by totemism than by idolatry in its usual sense. 



ADDRESS BY GARRICK MALLERY. 



33 



Government. — The powers of Israelite rulers were conferred on 
emergencies and were intended to be of short duration, but while 
they lasted were dictatorial. The Judges were despots without a 
standing army or an organized government. Their selection was due 
neither to descent, to suffrage, to feudal investiture, nor to violence, 
but was from the man's superiority, his ascendancy, strength and 
courage. It was rare for a man thus invested with power to be de- 
prived of it before his death. 

The alliance of the tribes was loose. They seldom hesitated to 
war upon one another. Even after nationality had been initiated 
the genius of David and the magnificence of Solomon could not 
permanently weld them together, and doubtless the}' would have 
temporarily fallen back into the incoherent state from which the 
Indians never emerged but for the late and conservative establish- 
ment of Jahvism which the Indians did not have. 

The characteristics of the Israelite and of the Indian, as of the 
Homeric Achseans, were predatory — the tribe and its clans, with 
their alliances, against the rest of the world. 

In the investigation of totemism among the Israelites it is im- 
portant to compare its continued existence in Arabia because the 
state of society there remains more primitive than it was in the 
land of Israel when the Old Testament was written. 

A large number of tribes having animal names are still found 
among the Arabs, for instance, Lion, Wolf, Ibex, She-fox, Dog, 
Bull, Ass, Hyena and Lizard. The origin of all these names is re- 
ferred by the people to an ancestor who bore., the tribal or gentile 
name. Also the animal names given in the tribal genealogies are 
often found belonging to sub-tribes, the same animal sometimes oc- 
curring in subdivisions of different tribes, these particulars corre- 
sponding with the Indian system. 

The tribes of the southern and eastern parts of Canaan had 
affinities both to Israel and to the Arabs. The Arab princes of 
Midian were the Raven and the Wolf— heads of tribes of the same 
names. More than one-third of the Horites, the descendants of 
Seir the he-goat, bear animal names ; so do the clans of the Edom- 
ites. It is disputed what the real name of Moses' father-in-law was ; 
but he had some connection with the Kenites. The list in Genesis 
xxxvi, is a count of tribal or local divisions and not a literal geneal- 
ogy. It is full of animal names, and the antelope stock was divided 
over the nation in a way only to be explained on the totemic and not 
5 



34 



SECTION H. 



a genealogic system. The same names appearing as totem tribes in 
Arabia, reach through Edom, Midian and Moab into Canaan where 
they show local distribution, only intelligible on the assumption 
that the totem system prevailed there also when the first books of 
the Old Testament were written. 

Professor Robertson Smith gives a select list of about thirty per- 
sons and towns bearing names derived from animals and plants. 
Dr. J. Jacobs has expanded this into one hundred and sixty such 
names, though their importance is considered by him to be lessened 
by the frequency of such names in England, forgetting, apparently, 
that the clan system also existed among the ancestors of the Eng- 
lish people. 

The tribe of Judah received the powerful accession of the Dog 
tribe, the Calebites, among whom there were many animal names. 

With such facts, and the knowledge that the early Israelites freely 
intermarried with the surrounding nations, it is to be supposed that 
the totemic system of those neighbors should appear in all Israel, 
as was obviously the case in Judah. 

The 26th chapter of Numbers gives the clans of the tribes. Al- 
together seventy-two clans are mentioned, and of these at least ten 
occur in two tribes, striking among whom are the Arodites or Wild 
Ass clan, found both in Gad and in Benjamin. Other clans also 
have animal names ; the Shillimites or Fox clan, of Naphtali ; the 
Shuhamites or Serpent clan, of Benjamin ; the Bachrites, or Camel 
clan, of Ephraim and Benjamin ; the Elonites, or Oak clan, of Zeb- 
ulon ; the Tolaites, or Worm clan, of Issachar ; and the Arelets, 
or Lion clan, of Gad. 

A special suggestion comes from the tribe of Simeon. In the 
blessing of Jacob, Simeon is coupled with Levi as a tribe scattered 
in Israel. There were Simeonites in the south of Judah, but they 
do not appear there as an independent local tribe. According to 
Genesis xlix, there must have been branches of the tribe elsewhere. 
It would seem that Simeon remained as a divided stock, having 
representatives through the female line in the different local groups. 
When the old system was displaced, Simeon lost importance and 
ultimately dropped from the list of tribes. The name of the tribe 
was lost but not the people, as has been noticed in careful statisti- 
cal examination of the Indians. 

In the stage of barbarism man belongs not to himself, but to his 



ADDRESS BY GARRICK MALLERT. 



35 



clan and tribe. In civilization responsibility is personal, and there 
can be no crime without a criminal intent. This was not so in the 
clan system, so the rules of obedience, punishment and protection 
were peculiar. 

Clan Punishment. — The Indian punishments known were death 
• or expulsion from the tribe, the latter, from the unprotected state 
of the offender, being tantamount to death. The code consisted in 
the application of the lex talionis. The vengeance of blood for homi- 
cide was exacted as a clan duty. This was executed by the clan 
of the person killed, generally by the nearest of clan kinship, and 
it was required even if the death were by accident, unless con- 
doned by payment. Among the Israelites, as among the Indians, the 
duty of blood revenge appears to have lain on the kin by the mother's 
side. 

Sanctuary. — The fact that no crimes could be individual, but were 
against a clan by a member of a clan, rendered it necessary to have 
some special provision to restrict vengeance ; so the right of sanc- 
tuary, which appeared later as a prerogative of religion, was in its 
origin sociologic. 

The avenger of blood among the Indians generally had the right 
to slay the criminal if found within a specified time, such as two 
days, after the act ; but if he should escape that long the avenger 
could no longer pursue and was himself liable if he should perse- 
vere. The clan at that stage interfered, and there were among some 
tribes localities (called by Adair the "Cities of Refuge") designated, 
in which the criminal should be safe from minor offences until the 
general wiping-out of vengeance at the next annual festival. Com- 
pare Numbers xxxv, 12 : u And they shall be with you cities of 
refuge from the avenger, that the man-slayer die not until he stand 
before the congregation in judgment." 

The functions of the avenger of blood are only referred to in the 
Pentateuch, but were well known in ordinary cases. The law treats 
of the exceptional circumstances of an accidental homicide. There 
is a trace, in Deuteronomy xxiii, of the general communal sanctu- 
ary in Israel. It enacts that any town or village shall be an asylum 
for an escaped slave. In Exodus xxi, the altar (presumably any 
one of the numerous village altars) is mentioned as a refuge. In 
the cities of refuge the sanctuary was used only for the mitigation 
of the revenge of blood, as Israel retained the old lex talionis. 

A mode of bringing to notice the barbarian stage of the Israel- 



36 



SECTION H. 



ites at the time mentioned, is to translate into English familiar 
personal names from the Old Testament, such as the Dog, the Dove, 
the Hyena, the Lion's "Whelp, the Strong Ass. the Adder, the Run- 
ning Hind. This brings into immediate connection the English 
translation of Indian names, such as Big Bear. White Buffalo, 
Wolf. Red Cloud. Black Hawk, Fox. Crow and Turtle. It is pos-* 
sible that in addition to gentile derivations (for the Israelites in 
that sense were Gentiles), a reason for the adoption of such names 
was that they could be represented objectively, as is certainly the 
case among the Indians, who possess very few names that cannot be 
represented in pictographs : and the very large topic of tattooing is 
connected with this device antecedent to writing. The compilers of 
the Old Testament probably desired to break down a former practice 
as is shown in Leviticus xix, 28 : " Ye shall not print any marks 
upon you." And there are other similar indications. 

Adoption. — The early history after the exodus shows many cases 
of adoption from among the neighboring tribes, in which the cap- 
tive or the stranger adopted became a member of one of the clans 
for the same reason as among the Indians, as otherwise he could 
have no status. 

Caleb is first known as the son of Jephunneh. the Kenezite. 
Next he appears as a chief of the tribe of Judah ; finally, in the 
book of Chronicles, his foreign descent is lost. He becomes Caleb, 
the son of Hezron. the son of Judah. This is an instance of adoption 
and is not contradictory, as Caleb could have no place in the tribe 
except by adoption. He is first described in accordance with the 
actual facts of his descent, but when adopted with his family and 
followers forming probably a sub-clan, he would be called by the 
name of the family that adopted him. 

The whole population of the country which, according to Deu- 
teronomy, was to have been exterminated, slowly became amal- 
gamated with the invaders. In this way alone their rapid increase 
can be accounted for. 

Xot until the late prophetic influence was the doctrine estab- 
lished that no quarter should be shown to the enemy and no alli- 
ance made with the Goim. a word meaning the "nations", with the 
implication of ••heathen", the use of which dates from the ninth 
century B. C. It is gratifying to believe that the stories of the 
wholesale extermination and cruel outrages injected into the his- 
torical narrative were afterthoughts intended to be examples for 



ADDRESS BY GARRICK MALLERY. 



37 



the future and that they never occurred in fact. Otherwise the 
brutality of the Israelites to the conquered would have been more 
horrible than that of the Indians among whom captivity was tem- 
pered by adoption. 

An interesting custom of the Indians connected both with the 
rite of sanctuary and that of adoption is that when captives had run 
through what was called by English writers "the gauntlet" to a post 
near the council house, they were for the time free from further mo- 
lestation. It is possible that in the northeastern tribes this was 
in the nature of an ordeal to discover whether or not the captive 
was vigorous and brave enough to be adopted into the tribe ; but 
among other tribes it appears in a different shape. Any enemy, 
whether or not a captive, could secure immunity from present dan- 
ger if he could reach a similar post, or if there were no post, the 
hut of the chief. A similar custom existed among the Arikara 
who had a special pipe in a "bird-box". If a criminal or enemy 
succeeded in smoking the pipe contained in the box he could not be 
hurt. This corresponds with the safety found in laying hold of the 
horns of the altar. 

Land. — In the earlier history of the Israelites there could be no 
individual property in land — it belonged to the clan as it did among 
the Indians. When arriving at sedentary and national life an ex- 
pedient was invented to compromise the permanent possession of 
land by the clan, with individual rights of occupancy, which would 
allow of a proper stimulus for improvements. This was done by 
the institution of the Sabbatical year, or the year of Jubilee. The 
Indians, not having reached the sedentary stage (except in rare 
instances), were not obliged to invent that device. The similar- 
ity remains, therefore, that no man could acquire an absolute prop- 
erty in land. The title was not in him but in his clan. 

Forbidden food. — The Indians long observed a prohibition of 
eating any part of the animal connected with their totem, and of 
course also of killing it. For instance, most of the southern In- 
dians abstained from killing the wolf; the Navajo do not kill 
bears, the Osages never killed the beaver until the skins became 
valuable for sale. Afterwards some of the animals previously held 
sacred were killed, but apologies were made to them at the time, 
and in almost all cases a particular ceremony was observed with 
regard to the reservation of certain parts of those animals from 
food, on the principle of synecdoche, considering the part to rep- 



38 



SECTION H. 



resent the whole, the temptation of using the food being too great 
to permit entire abstinence. The Cheroki reserved the tongue of the 
deer and bear from food, which they cut out and cast into the fire. 
An instance, reported this year as still existing among the Ojibwa, 
is in point, where there is a formal reservation, yet by a subdivis- 
ion among the same clan, an arrangement is made in which sub- 
clans may among them eat the whole animal. A bear is killed ; 
the head and paws are eaten b} r those who are one branch of the 
bear totem, and the remainder is reserved for others. There is a 
a common differentiation in which some persons can eat the ham 
and not the shoulder and others the shoulder and not the ham of 
certain animals. 

The Egyptians did not allow the eating of animals that bore 
wool. This is attributed to the sacred character of the sphinx, 
and has other religious connections. It is supposed by some writ- 
ers that the legislation of Moses with reference to forbidden food, 
was to antagonize social union with the Egyptians by permitting 
to the Israelites articles not used by the Egj-ptians, and vice versa. 
It is true that some forbidden food of the one nation was allowed 
to the other, but the abstinence of both from swine is not consist- 
ent with the hypothesis. 

The survival of totemism may be inferred from the lists of for- 
bidden food in Leviticus xi, and Deuteronomy xiv. It would 
appear that about the time of the exodus the Israelites were orga- 
nized on the basis of families or clans tracing through female lines, 
and named Hezir (swine), Achbor (mouse), Aiah (kite), Arod 
(wild ass), Shaphan (coney), and so on. Each of the clans re- 
frained from eating the totem animal or only ate it sacramentally. 
As the totem organization declined, the origin of the abstinence 
would be lost, but the custom lasted, and when the legislation was 
codified it was incorporated in the code. The hypothesis would ex- 
plain certain anomalies in the list; e. g., cone\', or rock badger, 
for which no other deserving attention has been given. The divi- 
sion into clean and unclean food by the two tests of cloven foot 
and rumination was a later induction from the animals regarded 
as tabu. This is confirmed by the want of an} T sj'stematization in 
the list of birds given in Leviticus. 

It would be expected that animal names were connected with 
the animal worship before mentioned, and there is some evidence 
that men, bearing a common animal stock name, though in different 



ADDRESS BY GARRICK MALLERY. 



39 



tribes or nations, recognized a unity of stock. Our most definite in- 
formation on the subject is derived from Ezekiel, chapter viii, where 
there seems to be an account in which the head of each house acted 
as priest, and the family or clan images, which are the objects of 
idolatry, are those of "unclean" reptiles or quadrupeds, i. e., those 
which are prohibited from use as food. It is true that the argu- 
ment of Professor Smith on this subject is controverted by Doctor 
Jacobs, but only as to the survival, not as to the early existence 
of the cult. 

No one has yet given a satisfactory theory of the Israelite di- 
vision between clean and unclean animals, apart from the expla- 
nation afforded by the totemic system. No rational motive can 
be assigned for the avoidance of certain animals, in themselves 
hygenically good. The explanation that swine's flesh was liable 
to bring disease, and therefore was prohibited for a sanitary rea- 
son only, covers but a small part of the subject and is not in itself 
satisfactory. The meat of the hog is, in fact, as wholesome in Sy- 
ria as it is in Cincinnati, and the medical conception of trichino- 
sis had certainly not arisen in the times under consideration. The 
avoidance of all meat, indeed of all food, for purposes of fasting 
and producing ecstasy, is in a different category and has already 
been mentioned. 

Marriage. — The laws of marriage in the stage of barbarism are in- 
tricate, but attention may be directed to a few points which strongly 
distinguish its features from those in civilization. Its most gen- 
eral characteristic is that it was strictly by legal appointment. 
The levirate, named from the word levir, a husband's brother, is 
in brief, the practice by which it is the combined right and duty of a 
brother — often the eldest surviving brother — to marry the widow of 
his deceased brother. Prof. E. B. Tylor reports that this practice ap- 
pears among one hundred and twenty peoples ; i. e., in about one in 
three of the distinct peoples of the world. It was almost universal 
among the Indians, sometimes with additional duties and privi- 
leges. A widow, as a rule, could not marry any one but her de- 
ceased husband's brother except on his refusal or after a long time 
of mourning. 

In several tribes the marrying of an elder sister gave rights over 
all the others; and sometimes the son-in-law, especially when he 
married the eldest daughter, became entitled to all the property of 
her father, and also the younger sisters of his wife if he chose. 



40 



SECTION H. 



Other men could not take them until after his refusal. This right 
to all the unmarried younger sisters sometimes continued after the 
death of the first wife. Not unfrequently a man married a widow 
and her daughters at once. 

Among the Israelites it was common to have several wives of 
equal status, who often were sisters. A widow had a right to ap- 
peal to her brother-in-law, or some member of her husband's family, 
for a second marriage, and an evasion of the duty was a gross of- 
fence. Deuteronomy xxv shows the degrading terms of the for- 
mality by which the brother-in-law was freed from the obligations 
of marriage and the widow allowed to marry another man. Judah 
admitted that Tamar's conduct was perfectly correct. It was but a 
legitimate extension of the levirate law. 

There is the clear statement in Leviticus that the Egyptians and 
the Canaanites formed such marriages as with them were connect- 
ed with the totemic system but by the Israelite law were made 
incestuous. The laws of incest given in Leviticus are probably 
later than the code of Deuteronomy where the prohibition is di- 
rected against marriage with a man's father's wife. This precept 
denounces the practice in Arabia by which the son inherited his 
father's wife as his property. 

In the framework of the Deuteronomic code there were three pro- 
hibitions : father's wife, sister, and wife's mother. To these of- 
fences Ezekiel adds marriage with a daughter-in-law. All those 
forms of quasi-incest were, according to the prophets, practised 
in Jerusalem ; and the history seems to show that all were once 
recognized customs. The taking of a father's wife was not wholly 
obsolete in the time of David. 

As regards the Israelite descent in the female line, it may be no- 
ticed that the children of Nahor by Milcah were distinguished from 
his children by his other wives. Rebekah's descent is practically 
valued as a descent from Milkah, and the family or clan connections 
is traced entirely through Milkah and Sarah. Moses' father mar- 
ried his father's sister ; Nahor married his brother's daughter ; 
Abraham married Sarah, the daughter of his father but not the 
the daughter of his mother. 

A passage in Judges relates to exogamy, recording that Ibzan 
had thirty sons and also thirty daughters whom he sent abroad, and 
took thirty daughters from abroad for his sons. Exogamy, how- 
ever, could not be kept up when the Israelites became mainly an 



ADDRESS BY GARRICK MALLERT. 



41 



agricultural people, and in the times of the kings only survivals of 
it remained. 

Mr. Fenton, in his acute remarks upon the story of Lot's daugh- 
ters, has not exhausted the subject. It was not only the fact that 
according to the clan system it was proper for Lot to marry his 
daughters, but under the circumstances it was obligatory upon him 
to do so. The logical propriety of the marriage of a father to his 
daughters, on the ground that they did not belong to the same clan, 
is clear, and the practice exists to-day among a number of the 
tribes of Indians not much affected by European influence. A fa- 
ther was not of kin to his own children. They belonged to the 
mother's clan, and not to his. An interesting example of this clan 
law is narrated by Dr. George M. Dawson as still existing among 
tribes of British Columbia, where a rich Indian would have nothing 
to do with the search for his aged father who was lost and starving 
in the mountains. Not counting his father as a relative, he said , 
"Let his people go in search of him." Yet that son was regarded as 
a particularly good Indian. 

There are other instances where the son would fight against the 
father to the death. Such cases would occur where a son married, 
necessarily, a woman of another clan, and went to live with her 
people, and when there was warfare between her clan and that of 
his father, he was by association expected to fight against the lat- 
ter, there being no reason why he should not. 

It is, however, true that, in a large number of tribes of Indians, 
the marriage of father and daughter has been, during the time of 
European examination, very rare. It may be suggested as a rea- 
son that a gradual change has occurred from the mother-right to 
the father-right, in which the attitude is reversed ; but practically 
the fact that, either the father or mother, by treating the daughter 
as an object of value or merchandise, could secure presents from 
the suitor, would have tended to break down this part of the clan 
marriage system before any other, and, the custom ceasing, the 
practice became wrong. So it is true to-day among Indians, as 
it was in a much more marked degree at the time of the compila- 
tion of the existing version of the Old Testament, that the mar- 
riage of a father and daughter is reprobated. In this connection it 
is interesting to notice that the Navajo have a myth, undoubtedly 
native, that in the old time one of their race took his daughter to wife 
6 



42 



SECTION H. 



and their offspring became the ancestor of the Utes, the hereditary 
enemies of the Navajo. This is a parallel with the stigma inflicted 
upon the Moabites and Ammonites who were the descendants of 
Lot and the enemies of the Israelites who wrote the history but 
yet were recognized by the latter as of the same stock. 

The part of the story of Lot which tends strongly to show its 
later manipulation, is that the authors of the version, having at 
that time the idea of a horrible incest, explained that the good man, 
specially so designated by tradition, was guilty of it only because 
he was unconscious through intoxication. They were obliged in 
accordance with one tradition, to make him the ancestor of Moab 
and Ammon ; from another tradition they had him left without any 
sons and no wife, the two daughters being all of his family who sur- 
vived the destruction of Sodom. They used their materials, there- 
fore, with the excuse of intoxication, but there was no occasion for 
such excuse. In the age to which the tradition related, the tran- 
saction was perfectly proper, does not involve sexual passion, and 
was required by law to keep up the stock, but the clan rules had 
been forgotten when the book of Genesis was written. 

In the stage of barbarism the marriage of brother and sister was 
common all over the world. Where polygamy existed, as was the 
case among the Israelites, and probably among all the Indians, a 
man could not, according to the rules of the gentile system marry 
into his own clan. If he took several wives it is probable that they 
would sometimes be of different clans not only from his own, but 
from one another. In such cases the child of the wife of clan A 
was not of the same clan as the child of the wife of clan B, and 
they could marry. The marriage of uterine brothers and sisters was 
not consistent with the clan rules. 

Writers on the subject of the clan system have extolled it as be- 
ing profound with physiological insight to prevent inbreeding ; 
but the best and latest physiologists doubt that inbreeding is bad 
unless there is a taint of blood which should prohibit the marriage 
of either party to any one, and a true understanding of the clan sys- 
tem would have shown that as it certainly permitted marriage be- 
tween a man and his half-sister, and with his aunt, his father's 
sister, if not the more violent case of father and daughter, it did not 
accomplish the object lauded. 

The late prohibition of a man's marriage to his deceased wife's 



ADDRESS BY GARRICK MALLERY. 



43 



sister cannot be maintained on any principle of physiology or so- 
ciology. It is a blunder that perhaps arose in the transition stage 
from the matriarchate to the patriarchate system. 

CONCLUSIONS. 

It has often been asserted that the Semites, and specially that 
branch of them lately styled the Syro-Aramaeans, were specially 
adapted to a spiritual religion ; that monotheism was in their racial 
constitution ; that whether through revelation or because they were 
well adapted to receive such revelation, their idiosyncrasy directly 
led them to spiritual ideas, which to modern minds means mono- 
theism. This was not the record of the historical books of the Old 
Testament, even after their manipulation. The prophets of Israel 
declared the exact contrary ; they denounced their own people as 
rejecting spiritual proof and as not deserving the favor of Jahveh. 
This declaration is confirmed. The beliefs and practices of the 
Israelites were substantially the same as those of other bodies of 
people in the same stage. 

The Israelites were not a " peculiar" people. There is, racially, 
no peculiar people in the sense intended. Mankind is homogene. 
ous in nature though placed in differing and ever advancing grades 
of culture. What has been called blood in a racial sense may be 
likened unto the water of the earth ; — as it comes from the clouds 
it is chemically the same, and it is subjected, wherever it is, to the 
same laws. The early course of a rill may be turned by a pebble, 
and from the elevations and depressions met it may become a lake, 
or a river, or a stagnant marsh. From the character of soil encoun- 
tered it may be clear or muddy, alkaline, chalybeate or sulphu- 
rous. In one sense, which belongs to modern and not to ancient 
history, the Jews are a peculiar people, from the fact that for many 
centuries, until lately, they proclaimed themselves to be such and 
observed religiously the doctrine about the Goim, and therefore did 
not intermarry with other peoples ; but this also has been from the 
fact that persecution made them pariahs and the other peoples would 
not intermariy with them. The so-styled purity of their race has 
been kept up by isolation during the recent centuries, but the as- 
sumption of great purity in the stock at the Christian era is not 
tenable, and now that their prejudices and those against them are 
dissolving, it is probable that what has been improperly called the 
Jewish race will disappear by absorption in precisely the same man- 



44 



SECTION H. 



ner that the Indians are now disappearing. To renew the simile, 
they both will be lost in the homogeneous ocean which all mankind 
seems destined to swell. 

I do not enter upon the controversy respecting the races of man- 
kind except to confess, as the sum of my own studies on the sub- 
ject, that all attempts at the classification of races have failed- 
The best generalization may be taken from the address of Professor 
Flower to the Section of anthropology of the British Association 
for the Advancement of Science : "I am compelled to use the word 
race vaguely for any considerable group of men who resemble each 
other in certain common characters transmitted from generation to 
generation." The most useful mode for the examination now of peo- 
ples by anthropologists is not by attempts at racial divisions, but by 
the determination of their several planes of culture with the recog- 
nition of specific environments. Admission of this fact is practical. 
The most sensible remarks ever made by missionaries were those of 
the Rev. Messrs. Lee and Frost who, after ten years in Oregon of 
what has been considered successful work, announced their aban- 
donment of their former belief that if the heathen were converted 
to Christianity civilization followed of course. They confessed 
that civilization must begin before Christianity could even be un- 
derstood. Acute travellers throughout the world have perceived 
the same fact, and it is not a too violent simile to say that Chris- 
tianity, belonging to the plane of civilization and to that only, sits 
on a savage or barbarian as a bishop's mitre would on a naked 
Hottentot. 

Moses did not change the Israelites from their barbarian condi- 
tion. It was not possible. As regards the culture strata we 
may take a lesson from geology. Coal is not found in the Silurian 
formation, therefore wise miners do not look there for coal. The 
higher mammals are not found earlier than the Cenozoic, though 
their precursors are in the Jurassic. Let us look in the savage 
stage as if it were Jurassic to understand and trace what we may 
afterwards find in the barbarian or Cenozoic, and developed later 
in the present epoch ; but to search for the complete ideas of civ- 
ilization in the period of barbarism would be as sensible as to dig 
for manuscripts among the workshops of flint arrowheads. 

There is a Rabbinical legend that Lot first argued the existence 
of one god ruling the universe, from the irregular phenomena ob- 
served on land and sea and among the heavenly bodies. "If these 



ADDRESS BY GARRICK MALLERT. 



45 



bad power of their own," he said, " they would have had regular 
motions, but as they had no regularity they were subservient to the 
occasional exercise of a higher will." With greater scientific knowl- 
edge these supposed irregular motions are now embraced within laws 
considered to be permanent, if not immutable ; but the existence 
of such tremendous laws gives a higher conception of their maker. 
Their suspension or violation is not in accordance with human rea- 
son, and mere suggestion of such variations clouds the glory of 
divinity. 

The doctrine attributed to Lot is instructive, because its concep- 
tion of nature permeated all the early philosophy. We now define 
a miracle specifically as a deviation from the laws of nature. But 
to those for whom nature had no laws, the prime definition as "the 
wonderful" was alone correct. A supernatural being could, and 
was expected to, do anything whatever in accordance with his arbi- 
trary will, and men who were inspired or empowered by the super- 
natural were also expected, in fact required, to work wonders. It 
would hardly be a paradox to assert that the supernatural was 
alone natural and that in the explanation of phenomena only the 
irregular was regular. 

The order of the evolution of revelation, as may be appreciated 
by every student regarding all revelations but that one which he 
credits, is that some practice existed early for which a natural expla- 
nation may be made. This practice became a formal custom which, 
after a time, was considered to be obligatory under the vague but 
compelling idea that it is "bad luck" not to observe it. Bad luck is 
necessarily connected with the supernatural, therefore the custom 
or the series of customs became a religion, and that was always ex- 
plained at a later time by a myth which was not necessarily an ex- 
planation made by imposture or fraud, but grew from the curiosity 
of men and their hurry to account for everything. All such myths 
are declared to be obtained, through revelation, from a power higher 
than man. The result is, therefore, that revelation, which is the 
last step in the evolution of religion, is enounced by antedating, to 
be the first step. When revelation is once admitted, man's mind 
clings to it as a refuge from doubt which always must attend the 
results of reasoning on subjects not admitting of demonstration. 
Such clinging becomes fanatical with most men because they dread 
as the greatest injury to be cast into the hands of the Giant Doubt- 
ing who for them is but another name for Giant Despair. 



46 



SECTION H. 



There is also a sentiment involved that the old thought, that of 
the ancestors, is always the best. This is incorrect unless on the 
theory that all knowledge conies from revelation. The continu- 
ance of the old is bad because it is old and is maintained through 
superstition in the true etymological sense of the word. Some ad- 
vocates of the old reject all new thoughts, but the more intelligent 
attempt to force a reconciliation. What they believe now must 
be right. What they are not accustomed to is shocking, therefore 
is wrong. So the old, which was always right, must be distorted 
to contain in it the new which also is right, and what there is in 
the old that cannot be managed otherwise must be explained away. 

An apparent exception to the unfitness of old direct teachings is 
where there has been a general degradation in culture after which a 
return to the results of the former and forgotten culture is most de- 
sirable. This is illustrated in the revival of learning after the 
dark ages in Europe when the classic writings as discovered and 
studied brought new illumination to the world. But this was a 
simple readjustment of sequence after a hiatus. The advance of 
development, not chronology, makes the proper criterion. The 
archaic is that which is nearest the beginning of human life. We 
have the history of the Israelites for forty centuries ; we have 
that of the Indians for little more than three centuries ; yet though 
the Israelites advanced in recorded times beyond the plane of the 
Indians, who shall say which of these was the older people? 

He would be both silly and malicious who should impugn my 
treatment of the present subject as a direct or covert attack upon 
the books of the Old Testament. On the contrary, I regard that 
noble work as the most important anthropologic record possessed 
by man, richly repaying such study and comparison as all valuable 
records demand. I gladly accept it as a genuine account, and be- 
lieve that though it has been colored by time and by the work of 
man, it never was invented, and is not to be treated^ as a literary 
or religious fabrication. It is asserted that some persons occu- 
pied in science fear or pretend to scorn the Bible. I do neither. 
I admire it, and study it, and gain much from it ; but no intelligent 
persons take as of the same authority all its versions or indeed all 
the contents of the books arbitrarily styled canonical on the very 
names and numbers of which churches and sects dispute. 

The Hexateueh contains the same intrinsic evidence of truth as 
was obvious to the Ojibwa, before mentioned, who said that the 



ADDRESS BY GARRICK MALLERY. 



47 



work was true because they and their fathers " had heard the same 
stories since the world was new." To those who can read it un- 
derstandingly it is a true story of a plane of culture. But when 
we find that distinct revelations have been and are claimed by all 
the tribes of men in that plane of culture we are forced to recall 
the words ©f the sage who gave as the reason for his disbelief in 
ghosts that he had seen too many of them. 

" Now as to myself I have so described these matters as I have 
found them and read them, but if any one is inclined to another 
opinion about them, let him enjoy his different sentiments without 
any blame from me." 



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